Three Saudi Princes Living in Europe Have Disappeared

In the last two years, three Saudi princes living in Europe have disappeared. All were critical of the Saudi government – and there is evidence that all were abducted and flown back to Saudi Arabia… where nothing further has been heard from them.

Early in the morning on 12 June 2003, a Saudi prince is being driven to a palace on the outskirts of Geneva.

His name is Sultan bin Turki bin Abdulaziz, and the palace belongs to his uncle, the late King Fahd. It’s the king’s favourite son, Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd, who has invited him to breakfast.

Abdulaziz asks Sultan to return to Saudi Arabia – where he says a conflict over Sultan’s criticisms of the Saudi leadership will be resolved.

Sultan refuses, at which point Abdulaziz excuses himself to make a phone call. The other man in the room, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Saleh al-Sheikh, leaves too and after a few moments masked men rush in. They beat Sultan and handcuff him, then a needle is plunged into his neck.

Unconscious, Sultan is rushed to Geneva airport – and carried on to a Medevac plane that is conveniently waiting on the tarmac.

Such, at least, is Sultan’s account of the events, as told to a Swiss court many years later.

Among Sultan’s staff, waiting at a Geneva hotel for him to return from his breakfast appointment, was his communications officer, Eddie Ferreira.

“Progressively, as the day went on the silence became deafening,” he remembers. “We couldn’t reach the security team. That was the first real alert. We tried to contact the prince; there was no response, no answer.”

Then, in the afternoon, two unexpected visitors arrived.

“The Saudi ambassador to Switzerland came in with the general manager of the hotel and quite simply just told everybody to vacate the penthouse and get out,” Ferreira says. “The prince was in Riyadh, our services were no longer required, and we could leave.”

What had Prince Sultan done that could have led his family to violently drug and kidnap him?

The previous year he had arrived in Europe for medical treatment, and started giving interviews critical of the Saudi government. He condemned the country’s record on human rights, complained about corruption among princes and officials, and called for a series of reforms.

Ever since 1932, when King Abdulaziz, known as Ibn Saud, founded Saudi Arabia, the country has been ruled as an absolute monarchy. It does not tolerate dissent.

Prince Turki bin Bandar was once a major in the Saudi police, with responsibility for policing the royal family itself. But a bitter family dispute over a contested inheritance landed him in prison, and on his release he fled to Paris, where, in 2012, he began posting videos on YouTube calling for reform in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis reacted as they had with Prince Sultan, and tried to persuade Turki to return. When Ahmed al-Salem, the deputy minister of the interior called, the prince recorded the conversation and posted it online.

Turki went on publishing videos until July 2015. Then, sometime later that year, he disappeared.

“He called me every month or two,” says a friend, the blogger and activist Wael al-Khalaf.

“Then he disappeared for four or five months. I was suspicious. [Then] I heard from a senior officer in the kingdom that Turki bin Bandar was with them. So they’d taken him, he’d been kidnapped.”

After a long search for news of Turki, I found an article in a Moroccan newspaper, which said that he had been about to return to France after a visit to Morocco, when he was arrested and jailed. Then, following a request from the Saudi authorities, he was deported with the approval of a Moroccan court.

We don’t know for certain what happened to Turki bin Bandar, but before he disappeared he gave his friend Wael a copy of a book he’d written, in which he had added what may be a prophetic note.

“Dear Wael, these statements are not to be shared unless I am kidnapped or assassinated. I know I will be kidnapped or they will assassinate me. I also know how they abuse my rights and those of the Saudi people.”

Image caption Saud bin Saif al-Nasr

Around the same time as Prince Turki vanished another Saudi prince, Saud bin Saif al-Nasr – a relatively minor royal with a liking for Europe’s casinos and expensive hotels – shared a similar fate.

In 2014 Saud began writing tweets that were critical of the Saudi monarchy.

He called for the prosecution of Saudi officials who’d backed the overthrow of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi the previous year.

Then, in September 2015, Saud went further.

After an anonymous Saudi prince wrote two letters calling for a coup to remove King Salman, Saud publicly endorsed them – the only royal to do so. This was tantamount to treason, and may have sealed his fate.

A few days later, he tweeted: “I call for the nation to turn the content of these letters into popular pressure.” Then his Twitter account went silent.

Another dissident prince – Prince Khaled bin Farhan, who fled to Germany in 2013 – believes Saud was tricked into flying from Milan to Rome to discuss a business deal with a Russian-Italian company seeking to open branches in the Gulf.

“A private plane from the company came and took Prince Saud. But it didn’t land in Rome, it landed in Riyadh,” Khaled says.

“It turned out Saudi intelligence had fabricated the entire operation,” he claims.

“Now Prince Saud’s fate is the same as Prince Turki’s, which is prison… The only fate is an underground prison.”

Find out more

Kidnapped: Saudi Arabia’s Missing Princes will be broadcast on BBC Arabic on Tuesday 15 August at 19:05 GMT and repeated on 16, 17, 19, 20, 21 and 22 August

The film was also broadcast on BBC Newsnight on Monday 14 August. Watch it here

Prince Sultan, being higher up the royal pecking order, was shuttled between prison and house arrest. But his health was also deteriorating, so in 2010 the royal family allowed him to seek medical treatment in Boston, Massachusetts.

What he did from the safety of his US exile must have horrified the Saudis – he filed a criminal complaint in the Swiss courts, accusing Prince Abdulaziz bin Fahd and Sheikh Saleh al-Sheikh of responsibility for his 2003 kidnap.

His American lawyer, Clyde Bergstresser, obtained a medical record from King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, where Sultan was admitted on 13 June 2003, which indicated that a tube had been placed into his mouth to help him breathe while anaesthetised, and that one side of his diaphragm was paralysed – presumably as a result of the assault.

For the first time a senior Saudi royal was launching a criminal complaint, in a Western court, against another family member.

But Bergstresser says the Swiss authorities have shown little interest in the case.

“Nothing has been done to pursue what occurred at the airport,” he says. “Who were the pilots? What were the flight plans when these planes from Saudi Arabia arrived? This abduction occurred on Swiss soil and one would think that there would be an interest in finding out how that occurred.”

Image copyrightGetty Images

In January 2016, Sultan was staying at an exclusive Paris hotel when, like Saud bin Saif al-Nasr, he was tempted on to an aeroplane.

He was planning to visit his father, also a well-known critic of the Saudi government, in Cairo, when the Saudi consulate offered him and his entourage of about 18 – including a personal doctor and nurses and bodyguards from the US and Europe – the use of a private jet.

Despite what had happened to him in 2003, he accepted.

Two members of the entourage explain how events unfolded. Both prefer to remain anonymous.

“We pulled on to the tarmac and in front of us was a huge airplane, with… it had the country of Saudi Arabia written on it,” says one.

“It was a little eerie because there were a lot of crew members on board. All of them were male,” says the other.

The plane took off with in-flight monitors showing it was bound for Cairo. But two-and-a-half hours into the flight, the monitors went blank.

Prince Sultan was sleeping in his room, but he woke up about an hour before landing. He looked out of the window, and appeared anxious, the former members of his staff say.

As it dawned on the passengers that they were about to land in Saudi Arabia, Sultan started banging on the cockpit door and crying for help. A crew member ordered the prince’s team to stay in their seats.

“We looked out the window and we just saw a bunch of people get out with their rifles slung over their chest and surrounded the plane,” says one of the members of his entourage.

The soldiers and cabin crew dragged Sultan from the plane. He was screaming at his team to call the US embassy.

The prince and his medics were taken to a villa and put under armed guard. On the plane the others waited nervously. They were later taken to a hotel, held for three days without passports or telephones, then allowed to fly to a destination of their choice.

Before they left, a Saudi official, who the prince’s staff recognised as one of the “flight attendants” on the plane, offered an apology.

“He told us that we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that he was sorry for the inconvenience,” one of them says.

The other adds: “I wasn’t inconvenienced – I was kidnapped. I was held against my will in a country that I did not choose to go to.”

It was an astonishing situation. Together with Prince Sultan, about 18 foreign nationals had been kidnapped, taken to Saudi Arabia, and held by the Saudi military.

There has been no news of Prince Sultan since these events.

I asked the government of Saudi Arabia to respond to the allegations in this film. It declined to comment.

Image caption Prince Khaled

Meanwhile Prince Khaled, still exiled in Germany, worries that he too will be forced to return to Riyadh.

“There were four of us family members in Europe. We criticised the family and its rule in Saudi Arabia. Three of us were kidnapped. I’m the only one left,” he says.

Could he be next on the abduction list?

“I’m convinced. I’ve been convinced for a long time. If they could do it, they’d have done it by now. I’m very cautious, but it’s at the price of my freedom.”

42 Comments on "Three Saudi Princes Living in Europe Have Disappeared"

Shortend on Thu, 17th Aug 2017 8:31 pm

Once you say or tweet something, you can’t take it back…EVER.
Wonder shat happens when they are brought back?
Maybe the same thing to the European kidnapped woman that are playmates to the Princes?
Nice appetizer for a large cat perhaps?

Anonymouse on Thu, 17th Aug 2017 8:39 pm

Who cares, after all, there are plenty more saudi ‘princes’ where they came from. Not as if there is a crippling shortage of saudi ‘royals’ or anything….

Makati1 on Thu, 17th Aug 2017 11:43 pm

Who cares? I prefer reading about another Missouri Jackass who didn’t realize that nothing ever leaves the internet.

“A Missouri state senator, Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-University City), has landed herself in a bit of hot water with with the U.S. Secret Service today after posting, then deleting, a comment on Facebook which read, “I hope Trump is assassinated!”

I would advise this demtart to get her ass from Missouri in time before the ticking timebomb goes off and move to Trans-Apalachia to join her bros.

Theedrich on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 4:05 am

More American corruption: the Wahhabi regime of “Saudi” Arabia engages in murder and savagery excelled only by North Korea because oh-so-righteous Yankeedom goes along with it. It’s all due to the treaty that FDR signed with the original King Saud back in February, 1945, just after murdering a third of a million German civilians in Dresden. Yup, in the view of American elites, oily Sand Negroes are preferable to Whites.

Davy on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 5:04 am

Who cares about Missouri makat. You talk about it more than I do. I rarely talk about Missouri. I get so tired of you talking about your insignificant stupid little overpopulated Filipino Island. Every other world out of you is how wonderful your refuge is. This is pretty interesting though. Look at the population densities around you and around your fantasy farm on the Pacific coast. Pretty frightening place for a refuge:

List of white history statues that have been removed c.q. have been proposed to be removed. And this is only the beginning. Expect Washington and Jefferson to be the next victims. And when Trump will leave office, the deep state will open the borders to finalize the victory over white America once and for all, as is the intention of the deep state, as admitted by its representative Paul Krugman:

A lot of the craziness comes from cultural/ethnic issues—rural White Americans who feel they are losing their country, and they are right. They are losing their country. In the end, the power they now have will go away, but it’s a very difficult and dangerous time until then. The future is represented by Mayor Bill DeBlasio of New York, “but Ted Cruz of Texas is still out there.”

Note the glee, the same glee co-tribalist apneaman loves to put on display here at the demise of the “white tribal monkeys” (so his tribal group, the Ukrainian Talmud-Turks wil win) and backed by absolute cucks like bobinget.

Davy on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 6:00 am

“The story of dispossession:”

Please clog, spare me the drama. Your whole narrative is tabloid and overblown. It is not that big of an issues. It keeps the sheeple and the fake news networks occupied. The lying liberals love it and it gives them another scapegoat for their failure. It will give the extremist right wing new vigor but these people represent a tiny minority of what is happening in the US. Around here and most places it is not worth even talking about. People are busy making a living. When the store shelves are empty then we will have real talk from everyone. This is cultural nonsense of a country in cultural decay. You are a Dutch guy obsessed with this hollow anti-American race narrative. You have gone makati lately clog. You are losing credibility.

Antius on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 6:07 am

Clog, I agree with your basic assessment of the situation. It is happening in Europe too, in fact just about everywhere outside of Russia.

It makes me feel both furious and hopeless as someone that has three (white) children who appear to face an uncertain future because that future has been deliberately vandalised.

We can see the problem. We need practical solutions rather than ‘we all doomed’ narratives.

deadlykillerbeaz on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 7:22 am

The four American heroes/gods carved into stone at Mount Rushmore need to be blown to smithereens too.

We gotta get this stuff done.

Bomb the capitol dome, raze the Pentagon.

Good luck with that.

paultard on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 7:43 am

Extremist tard preachers are in hiding. They need to be inglorious basterded. Monument are gods of war and conquest of 2nd place runner ups

paultard on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 7:45 am

It’s all about the sec. No sex hate women. Extremist tard preachers. No diff from Isis

onlooker on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 8:29 am

This is how the governments especially despotic ones act when they feel threatened. They crack down ever more harshly and brutally. KSA has good reasons to feel threatened and they will have better ones going forward

Cloggie on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 9:02 am

We can see the problem. We need practical solutions rather than ‘we all doomed’ narratives.

The solution of course lies in Eastern Europe and Russia, that are not political correct and are glad they escaped from communism, where America is about to be taken over by racial communism.

But that means that Britain needs to jump over its own shadow and I do not see that happening, certainly not after Brexit (if that happens).

I’m Dutch, that is I’m a west-ward looking “Anglo-German” and basically pro-British (history, Protestantism, etc.) and in international projects I get along fine with British (and North-Americans) for exactly that reason.

However, on a geopolitical level I’m Gaullist. The agenda of de Gaulle was anti-Anglo-Zionist and pro-German and pro-Russia. I see that as the key to white survival since early 2000s.

In fact Brexit has made it easier for us continental Europeans to make the switch to Russia and set up a Confederation of “the white race of Christian heritage”. Once that is in place we can present an alternative for beleaguered Europeans in North-America, to give up on America, secede and join Europe.

Once America will have reached end-of-life status (somewhere between next month and 2025), Britain can no longer hold on to its strategy it has followed since 1891, namely the pursuing of the “superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race” and will probably turn to continental Europe, because of lack of alternatives.

Davy on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 9:17 am

Your an extremist clog, living in your overgeneralized world of fantasy outcomes. You are a eurotard anti-American who has never been here to see how people interact. You use MSM and off the wall alternative sites as your basis for history revisions and fantasy futures. As long as you want to rewrite my history and future I will piss on you and your stupid Eurotard world. Go circle jerk with makat.

Cloggie on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 9:34 am

Strange, the other day you admitted your country is falling apart behind your back.

But I am sure everything is fine in Missouri, that voted comfortably 57-38 last November and is high on the recommendation list of James Howard Kunstler (who lives in the US, so he should know) to escape the consequences of a possible civil war (his words).

Giving your country away to the third world, and destroying the future of your children, now that is extremist.

Wonder who will have the last piss.

joe on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 9:50 am

The US should be putting up statues of German, Irish, Polish, Italian, immigrants. The US hillbilly history ended when the industrial revolution ate up the south economically just a China is eating up the US, and may cause a similar kind of calamity. Working class people in coal mines and wealthy land owners killing each other to get to be on top. They want to topple some losers generals that some racists have love for, so what. Those stupid generals hated the South if they loved their countries they should have never let Sherman rape half the country, they should build a memorial to the half – naked starving idiots that tried to fight an industrially armed force of hundreds of thousands of men most of whom never owned a slave and could never with muzzle loading buck shot and round ball. History is stupid when used myopically. Nobody wants to hate slave owning mullatos that were as bad as anyone, the children of blacks, buying and selling blacks, nobody want to tell the truth, that racism is the propaganda of greed.

Jerome Purtzer on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 11:11 am

Hey Clog, now you know how the American Indians felt when they were being overrun by the “Settlers”. History repeats over and over.

Hello on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 11:38 am

>>>>Hey Clog, now you know how the American Indians felt when they were being overrun by the “Settlers”. History repeats over and over.

Yes, isn’t it amazing. But the indians can be excused for not acting and not swiflty dispatching the first europeans upon arrival. Because they could’t know there’s a practically limitless supply of europeans at the flood gates waiting.

Europeans can’t be excused. They know very well that africa is a limitless high performance ape breeder place. Europeans know that keeping importing negros will virtually eliminate the natives in 100 years. There’s no excuse for this stupidity.

The only condolesecense is that europe gets what it deserves, for utter stupidity.

Cloggie on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 12:01 pm

Hey Clog, now you know how the American Indians felt when they were being overrun by the “Settlers”. History repeats over and over.

Not to mention the Germans who were killed and raped by the millions by the US before they and the rest of the Europeans were colonized in order to be multiculturalized by your real behind the scenes rulers. The revenge will be sweet though.

On a positive note everything will be forgiven and forgotten if the European-Americans will be treated like the Indians and get a reserve of their own, the Mississippi basin to be precise:

Clog, you are talking like a soap opera. Things have been bad here in the US lately but they have always been bad. We have not had good news since the 60’s. You are cherry picking news and sensationalizing it all in support of your Eurotard agenda. Are you losing it man? Calm down and focus, you have some good points and plenty to contribute. Don’t turn into an imbecile like makat.

paultard on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 1:58 pm

A hero policewoman surrounded by drugged-up jihadis wearing ‘Coke can’ suicide vests killed four out of five of them herself and saved an injured colleague, it was revealed today

When money goes crap we have culture wars for a diversion. Follow the money, or lack of it.

Makati1 on Fri, 18th Aug 2017 10:43 pm

In other, important, news:

“TeaRiNG DoWN LiBeRTY…”
“Pat Buchanan Asks “In This Second American Civil War – Whose Side Are You On?””
“Only In Cali: New Bill Would Imprison Healthcare Workers For Using Incorrect Pronouns With Patients”
“Dilbert’s Scott Adams Explains “How To Know You’re In A Mass Hysteria Bubble””
“Retired Green Beret Warns “A Domestic Destabilization Is Underway””
“The Entire Dynamic Has Changed” Far-Right Groups Becoming Increasingly Visible On Campus”
“U.S. Has 3.5 Million More Registered Voters Than Live Adults – A Red Flag For Electoral Fraud”
“Financial Times: “America Is Now A Dangerous Nation””http://www.zerohedge.com/

“10 States With the Most Hate Groups” (Missouri is number 2)
“Baltimore’s Homeless Erect Modern Day ‘Hooverville’ Tent City On The Front Lawn of City Hall”
“Missouri regulators reject massive Midwest wind power line”
“Clouds developing over U.S. LNG export potential”
“Synthetic Heroin Is Too Powerful for the Overdose Antidote” (US)
“Market Will Fall By 50-75% As Petrodollar & Energy Sector Break Down”
“1 In 7 New York City Public-School Students Is Homeless”
“Students head back to unfunded schools in three U.S. states”
“Here’s how much you save when you don’t have kids”http://ricefarmer.blogspot.fr/

More proof of America’s slide into the 3rd world.

Davy on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 4:33 am

You are there already makat, we are just following you down. Tell us how it is so we can avoid some of your mistakes.

So there will be no neo-con New Middle East. Instead, the “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – has gained the upper hand. Live with it.

And then there is China, “leading from behind” in the Middle-East.

Again, the neocohns no longer need to be taken serious, although they could and probably will create a lot of havoc after Trump.

The real geopolitical factor to be reckoned with (and contained) is China.

Boat on Sat, 19th Aug 2017 9:48 pm

clog,

“The real geopolitical factor to be reckoned with (and contained) is China”.

China is not going to mess with its meal ticket. Who are China’s biggest trading partners. The US, Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Australia. China will come around because they have little choice.

India is another problem for China currently. Lets put it this way, China’s aspirations are already and have been contained. They still have 300 million to bring into the 21st century.

You can laugh about Alex Jones all you want, but you would make a real mistake to underestimate the influence of this champion of the American deplorables, who still promotes a sort of color-blind American civic nationalism a la Trump and Bannon-Breitbart.

There is huge ‘high noon’ showdown in the US brewing about the fate of the country. Are the Europeans (“whites”) going to be rammed into minority position as the “George Soros deep state” wants to see happening [*] and made powerless or will the “whites” be able to secede and create a country of their own. Juicy little detail: they all have weapons.

Forget about peak oil and CC going to really bite any time soon, if ever. This is the real thing that will really bite into everybodies lives soon, probably from the moment onwards when Trump will leave the WH. Perhaps Trump will even organize the resistance if he is impeached.

If this conflict will erupt, as it eventually will, it will mean the end of the US empire and eventually the US itself as a large coherent territorial state.

rural White Americans who feel they are losing their country, and they are right. They are losing their country. In the end, the power they now have will go away, but it’s a very difficult and dangerous time until then.

Sure mr Krugman, That was 2014 when you said it. The dangerous time is now and you lost (temporarily?) the White House and the war against the media like your NYT fake news organisation has begun in earnest in the US. And outside the US everybody wants to see the US to go flat on its face, except perhaps vassals Merkel and May, just like the USA and USSR wanted to see Europe to go flat on its face after 1933. The revenge will be sweet.

Davy on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 6:43 am

“There is huge ‘high noon’ showdown in the US brewing about the fate of the country. Are the Europeans (“whites”) going to be rammed into minority position as the “George Soros deep state” wants to see happening [*] and made powerless or will the “whites” be able to secede and create a country of their own. Juicy little detail: they all have weapons.”

Sorry, clog, you are falling for a self-created fantasy again. You project collapse on the US and ignore it on your doorstep. Wow, if that is not the classic Baghdad Bob syndrome. Your “high noon showdown” is a dud and nonevent. It is a MSM and a minority of the population involved in a broken political system of victimization and scapegoating. This is not most people’s reality. Most people have more important things to do. Right after the election people were all hyped up but most people are tired of the nonsense. Most normal people that is.

People like you are all consumed with it and what is strange with you is you never been here to talk to the people. You are the supposed expert on what Americans think in their heart. What a fruit loop in action. Most of the hard core anti-Americans here don’t know what is going on here they are google brats who cherry pick facts for a message of hate. They have this hate filled message but never look in the mirror at themselves. In fact if you throw the same shit back in their face they get all bent out of shape. The same shit is in their backyard too.

Cloggie on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 6:58 am

China is not going to mess with its meal ticket. Who are China’s biggest trading partners. The US, Japan, S Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Australia. China will come around because they have little choice.

China and the USA are not “trade partners”; instead China is a donor to the US of products, for which it is compensated by paper notes IOY’s.

The U.S. trade deficit with China was $347 billion in 2016. The trade deficit exists because U.S. exports to China were only $116 billion while imports from China were $463 billion.

The EU has about half this deficit, namely 180B euro, which China is using to buy itself in everywhere, including valuable German industries. this cannot be allowed to continue. China needs to be stopped, that is it needs to be balanced.

And China itself is very uneasy about letting this situation to continue, as it fears that it won’t be able to convert its massive amount of cash in real values.

China is long the real #1 geopolitical actor on this planet, regardless of how much noise neocon-dominated Washington makes.

Davy on Sun, 20th Aug 2017 8:00 am

Clog, where is China going to send all those products if it were not for the US? China is a debt ridden ecological nightmare facing an economic armageddon. It has created a credit impulse since the 08 financial crisis that once curtailed, as it will have to be, the global economy is going to be in serious trouble. This includes your Euroland and the US. Dig deeper on the deficit because there are distortions that change the real dynamics. Clogism is another version of makatism with a smelly Dutch cheese odor.

“In a new report on the methodology of calculating the U.S.-China trade deficit, my colleagues and I argue that both countries vastly overestimate the size of the real trade deficit, presenting a distorted picture of the current relationship. According to the United States Commerce Department, the U.S. had a $367 billion trade deficit with China in 2015, a number that has been growing in recent years. Our analysis, however, finds that the real trade deficit is likely closer to $132 billion, only slightly more than a third of the U.S. figure. The production of an Apple iPhone is a great example of why focusing on the official trade balance figures is incredibly misleading. While designed in California, iPhones are made up of components sourced from around the globe, ultimately assembled and exported from China. Despite the pricey export values of iPhones, China only provides the low-value assembly, which amounts to about $20 per phone. Compared to the average export price of $500, this amounts to a value-added ratio of 4 percent. And yet the official U.S. statistics report each iPhone as representing $500 worth of imports from China to the U.S.”